My weekly game night fell apart because of that one friend who always rules-lawyers...

I started hosting a board game night at my place about 3 months ago, every Saturday. We had a solid group of six people and it was going great until last month when Mark joined. Mark is a self-proclaimed board game geek who insists on reading every rule aloud before we start, and then during the game he argues every single move. Last week we tried to play Catan and he spent 15 minutes debating whether a settlement placement was legal because of a tiny wording thing in the manual. Then on Tuesday, he told my friend Jen that her strategy was 'suboptimal' and she got all quiet and left early. I'm thinking about just uninviting him but I don't want to cause drama. Has anyone else had a friend who ruins game night by being too intense?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_holly5d ago

...rule lawyers are the worst honestly. They suck all the fun right out of the room and make everyone feel stupid for just wanting to play a game. I'd straight up tell Mark he's being too much, or just stop inviting him and say you're cutting the group size. You don't owe him drama, you owe your other friends a good time.

paul_ramirez5d ago

Read an article recently about how some game designers actually encourage bending rules for the sake of the story. It said the whole point of tabletop games is collaboration, not running everything through a compliance check. The vibe gets killed when someone's more worried about page 47 of the rulebook than whether everyone's having a good time. Cutting the group size sounds harsh but honestly sometimes you gotta prioritize the people who actually want to play together.

quinn1615d ago

Disagree a bit here @paul_ramirez. I get that rule lawyers can kill the fun, but totally ignoring rules can also wreck a game. I've seen groups where the DM bends stuff so much that the story makes no sense and nothing you do matters. A little structure keeps things fair and gives everyone a reason to care about their choices. Maybe just have a quick chat with Mark before cutting him out, like saying "hey, sometimes we gotta let stuff slide for the story to work.